ICANN

What is ICANN?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. These services were originally performed under U.S. Government contract by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other entities. ICANN now performs the IANA function.

As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to:

  • preserving the operational stability of the Internet;
  • promoting competition;
  • achieving broad representation of global Internet communities;
  • and developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

ETSI & ICANN

The Technical Liaison Group

ETSI is involved in ICANN via the ICANN TLG (Technical Liaison Group) which consists of four organizations:

  • European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI),
  • International Telecommunications Union's Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T),
  • World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and
  • Internet Architecture Board (IAB).

The purpose of the TLG is to connect the ICANN Board with appropriate sources of technical advice on specific matters pertinent to ICANN's activities. Each TLG organization is entitled to appoint two representatives. The eight TLG representatives are responsible for deciding where to direct a technical question from ICANN when ICANN does not ask a specific TLG organization directly.

ETSI's current representatives to the ICANN TLG are Fernando Soriano (ETSI Board member) and Bernardo Correia (ETSI External Relations Officer).

ICANN Board of Directors

The ICANN TLG (Technical Liaison Group) has a non-voting liaison seat on the ICANN Board of Directors. This position rotates between the TLG members (except for IAB who have their own seat on the Board). According to the ICANN Bylaws the order of rotation is ETSI, ITU-T, and W3C.  The position was held by Jonne Soininen (ETSI) in 2010 and has now rotated back to ITU-T (Reinhard Scholl) for 2011.

ICANN NomCom

The Nominating Committee (ICANN NomCom) is designed to function independently from the Board, the Supporting Organizations, and Advisory Committees. Nominating Committee members act only on behalf of the interests of the global Internet community and within the scope of the ICANN mission and responsibilities assigned to it by the ICANN Bylaws.

Members contribute to the Nominating Committee both their understanding of the broad interests of the Internet as a whole and their knowledge and experience of the concerns and interests of the Internet constituencies which have appointed them. The challenge for the Nominating Committee is to integrate these perspectives and derive consensus in its selections.

The ICANN TLG (Technical Liaison Group) has a voting seat on the ICANN Nominating Committee (NomCom). This position rotates between the TLG members (except for IAB). According to the ICANN Bylaws the order of rotation is W3C, ETSI, and ITU-T. The position was held by Francisco da Silva (ETSI) in 2010 and has now rotated back to ITU-T (Phil Davidson) for 2011.